Category Archives: Gaming

I’ve played video games of one sort or another from a very young age. I remember when my grandparents bought my family an IBM PS/1, and I played some really basic games on that computer when I was around the age of 7 or 8. Even before that, at Christmas time I would go over to the grandparents and me and the other kids would play Track and Field and Duck Hunt on the NES that they had purchased, which I was only allowed to use on special occasions. My gaming life really took off when I finally convinced my parents to buy me a console, a Sega Genesis, a 16-bit system that included the greatest video game ever made in my opinion, NHL 94. Around that same time, as the PS/1 was outliving its usefulness, again my grandparents bought my family a Gateway 2000, with a beastly 75 mhz Pentium processor. I was able to play games like Mad Dog McCree and get on Prodigy or AOL and even play the occasional game online. Not long after, one of my best friends, who was also a neighbor, somehow managed to convince his mom to get him Warcraft II, and I also managed to get the game (I don’t remember if I just borrowed it from him or what), and we would tie up both our home’s phone lines as I would dial his modem and we would play head to head Warcraft battles lasting hours. These matches would of course get interrupted any time one of our family would pick up the phone to make a call. I really loved PC gaming as a kid, and it continued as I got older. I also kept up on console gaming as well… even while I was playing sports practically full time, I was staying up til 1 or 2 am on school nights playing video games. Outside of playing youth sports as a teenager, video games were my number 1 hobby.

I would call my relationship with video games obsessive or even addictive. This relationship continued all throughout my 20s and early 30s. As I got older, this relationship got more and more unhealthy. PC, hand-held, and console games were the primary way I filled my time, along with plenty of alcohol and drugs. I watched fewer and fewer movies and spent most of my time couch-bound. I’ve never exercised consistently since I got out of school and stopped playing sports. I would also smoke cigarettes fairly obsessively as I took part in this past-time. When I was unemployed for long stretches I would just play games most of the day and get wasted. Not exactly a productive use of my time, I know. Eventually, Hearthstone came around, and I started to play it obsessively. I was never that good at it due to the negative headspace I was in, but I played it for basically a year straight, non-stop, at the expense of nearly any other gaming experience. The only time I would pick up another game is if a friend was in the room with me and wanted to play a fighting game head to head, or something like that. Eventually, my relationship with Hearthstone soured, I had used it to fill a void in my life, and after spending far too much time and money with it, my play eventually tapered off. This happened because I got clean, and I got a good job that kept me busy 30 hours a week. Eventually, after losing a match in Hearthstone made me too angry one day, I dropped it completely. I’ve now gone 6 months without picking it back up, despite the sunk costs I have in that game with hundreds of hours played unlocking a multitude of useless digital bullshit in that game. I’ve thought of selling my Blizzard account but truthfully I have no desire to use my Blizzard account ever again or even come close to playing Hearthstone ever again. It completely crowded out my enjoyment of video games and became a sick compulsion for me.

Since I stopped playing Hearthstone, I’ve only picked up one other game, Magic 2015, which I only play occasionally. I get more enjoyment watching others play it and comment about it on YouTube, personally. Since I stopped playing Hearthstone every day my use of other video games has still not returned to normal levels. I attribute this to getting clean, getting a good job, and attempting to be more social with people in person, rather than living 90% of my life in front of a TV or computer screen. Whenever I think of playing a game or picking something up I start to get nervous because I feel incredibly burnt-out. I certainly enjoyed playing games in the past and feel I generally got my money’s worth in terms of entertainment value, but on the other hand I’m starting to look at it as a massive waste of time. The joy I used to get from gaming is mostly gone. I look at the use of time spent gaming as a chore or a burden now, especially since I have found more interesting things to do with my life. I don’t know, it’s weird and somewhat hard to explain, but I’m trying to change my patterns of activity and thinking into a more positive direction, and one of the ways I’m doing that is basically by only playing games a few hours a week, if that. I just don’t care about video games any more.

I’ve played a lot of Magic: The Gathering, and I’ve played a lot of Hearthstone. I have mainly played Magic on Xbox and PC, as well as very occasionally in person on paper, and I’ve played Hearthstone on PC and iPad. To understand what I’m about to talk about, it would help to at least have a cursory understanding of what these games are about. Here’s an Intro to Magic, and here’s an Intro to Hearthstone.

It is my opinion, after playing hundreds and hundreds of hours of both Magic and Hearthstone, that Magic is the better game. I’m not saying one game is objectively good, or objectively bad, this is merely my own subjective opinion about these games and why I think the way I do. If you like Hearthstone more than Magic, that’s great, I respect that opinion, I just don’t agree with it. To keep this comparison simple, I will mainly be comparing the Magic: Duels of the Planeswalkers video game series to Hearthstone. Paper Magic is a whole different world on its own, with multiple game types and thousands and thousands of cards to choose from, and it’s not really appropriate to compare that to Hearthstone, which has only several hundred cards and exists exclusively in a digital setting.

My reasons for liking Magic more have to do with overall game design, card and meta variety, and gameplay depth. These obviously overlap some, but I’ve divided it this way to keep this from turning into one long stream of consciousness rant. Let’s dig in.